R/C Naval Combat

From a monetary point of view, you get more bang for the buck with a French ship.
With the Quad turrets, the cost of arming a French ship is half of what it would cost to arm a Bismarck!

The only additional cost is the assembly that change the French flag to a white flag and then to a German flag each time she stops. LOL!

Ive been thinking of building a french ship next... I know of only 2 people in the whole of france who have started building, and none of them wanna be french. Those who are interested, but havent started, dont wanna be french either.
The reason is mathematics. gives me a ship which can be the goodies or the baddies.
I dont understand these guys!!! you dont have to put toilets in french ships! lol

You forgot more turrets Kotori.

Oops, forgot about that one. More barrels per turret than any other nation. I'll bet once they heard about King George V getting quads, they started debating hextuple turrets...

No matter what period you look at, there's always some fascinating, unique bit of naval architecture the French have that no other nation does. I would love to see some of their early-period ships built into combat models.

There's also the good availability of plans.

effectivly, the french have a hidden stock of plans.. but seriously big! for example...

RICHELIEU 1940
http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/planbato/Plans/planbato.php?id=468
mogador 1937
http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/planbato/Plans/planbato.php?id=345

SUFFREN 1927
http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/planbato/Plans/planbato.php?id=394

SULLY 1901
http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/planbato/Plans/planbato.php?id=395

LORRAINE 1913
http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/planbato/Plans/planbato.php?id=328

L INDOMPTABLE 1933
http://www.servicehistorique.sga.defense.gouv.fr/02fonds-collections/banquedocuments/planbato/planbato/Plans/planbato.php?id=324

if you change the N° at the end you get a boat. someone should download the lot before they stop access.
If you go to the MoD francais the links are broken, but the details arent. and here's the funny bit. they stopped the links because of...

PIRACY !!!

Those web sites do not seem to work!
Yes, I changed the number at the end with no success.

I remember down loading the MOG's plans a long time ago, then they removed all ship plans from the web site.

I seem to recall hearing, a while ago, that the NTXBG had backup copies of the entire French national archive. Don't remember where I heard that, though.

I have the Bouvines, Concordet, Bisson, Ernest Renan and Edgar Quinet.

Stephen got a bunch of those backup copies when he was in Texas.

effectivly theyve gone, just until a few weeks ago, they worked

When I first heard about the hobby, I saw an article in a scale ship modeler magazine, and I recall seeing a photo of the ships on the water at an event. The ship that caught my eye was the French heavy cruiser Algerie, which was being battled by the daughter of one of the founders of the hobby. It was painted really light grey.
A couple of years later, at an event out in N.J. Marty showed up with a brand new Richelieu class French battleship. It was also painted a real light grey. I was pretty certain that that big, fast, battleship was going to give the allies the firepower they needed to crush the axis, which pretty much had been dominating the allies. But she was ram-sunk by an Italian battleship at the very start of a battle.
I don't recall just how well she ran, but I sure did like the looks of that fine ship.
A few years later, I was going through some books with my brother Freddy, trying to decide on a pair of ships to build. He decided on the German battleship Gneisenau, and he wanted me to build her sistership Scharnhorst, so that we could run as a team.
Later, I was reading up on the German twins, and saw that the French had laid down a pair of battleships in response to the Scharnhorst and Gneisenau, the Bismarck and Tirpitz, and a pair of Italian fast-battleships.
The new French battleships were called Richelieu, and Jean Bart.
I kept reading, and the more I read about them , the more I liked about them. And I remembered Marty's old Richelieu, and how much hope I had had in that ship. And I decided to build one of my own.
I called her the Jean Bart.
That is how I got started in the French navy.
Mikey

As someone else posted earlier in this thread, the French ships have a look of their own. Very interesting funnels, ram-bows (which in some cases are not actually ram-bows at all, but designed to lessen the blast effects on the structure from the chase-guns), turrets, cranes. Even the hulls themselves have their own look. Lots of tumblehomes in the older ships.
So they will not be mistaken for anything else out on the water.
Mikey

Ya know, it's kinda odd. For all I like the French Navy, I don't think I've ever sailed a French ship. Ever. Not even an unarmed merchant. I've sailed German, British, American, Japanese, Russian, Italian, Austro-Hungarian, and Dutch, of all shapes and sizes, but I cannot recall ever sailing a French ship. Now that's an oversight I'll have to correct.

I also like running boats that we do not see in great numbers all of the time.
Even better yet. I like running boats that haven't been seen at all.
I build the boats for the most part, based on the design of the ship itself, and not so much the history.
The French had some truly great designs in most of their ships.
Mikey

And if in the grand scheme of things they were not truly great, no one can call them boring.

The French and to a smaller extent the Russians are on of the reasons that I will more clubs went to 1900 than 1905 as a start date. So many truly interesting looking ships that were launched between '00 and '04.

Anachronus, That is one of the things we did in Treaty. Start date is 1901. I fact a number of us are building WWI era boats to fight just that era ships. The speeds are more equal in that era along with the weights of the ships.